We recently conducted a survey of business professionals (301 of them to be exact) and IT professionals (460) to get an idea of the challenges they face with striking the delicate balance between maintaining adequate levels of security and ensuring business objectives are met through fostering user productivity. Our objective with this research was two-fold: 1) to reaffirm the need for new products we’re developing around the concept of context-aware security. 2) To gauge the awareness of the concept and the need for these types of solutions across our customers. You can see a summary of the survey results here.

We provided the respondents with a definition of context-aware security:

Context-aware Securityis a concept of using previously unrelated points of risk data to create a general “risk score” that can be used to make real-time decisions and security enforcement.

A few themes became abundantly clear as we looked at the results:

Most organizations, business professionals, and IT professionals struggle to achieve the correct security/productivity balance – in fact 86% of IT professionals prioritize high security standards over employee convenience. And, 90% report the need for multiple passwords for end user access – a common symptom of security/productivity out of balance.

Very few people know that context-aware security solution exists. Only 28% feel that their organization has already adopted a context-aware approach to security.

The vast majority of people see great value in these types of solutions. Ninety-four percent expressed challenges due to the lack of a context-aware security approach.

Most people don’t know where to turn to make it a reality. In fact 42% express lack of knowledge about the need among IT decision makers as the reason they have not adopted the new approach to security, with 26% acknowledging a lack of knowledgeable people, 17% lack the funding, and 15% express an inability to access tools.

It appears that the concept of security that adapts to a constantly evolving risk landscape to provide the ideal level of controls for each individual situation, is highly desirable, something that should exist, but something that is difficult for organizations to even know where to start.

But that is changing. Solutions exist that deliver these capabilities today. The solution can be affordable and easily implemented. And the solution can put you on the path to achieving the perfect balance of security and productivity. If you want to learn how, I invite you to watch our recorded webcast called Solving the Security/Efficiency Stalemate. In this webcast, Jackson Shaw, Senior Director of Product Management for the Dell One Identity family of IAM solutions discusses the difficult balancing act, reviews the survey results with Dimensional Research, and provides advice on making context-aware security a reality in your environment today.

If you’ve faced these challenges. If you’ve felt you had nowhere to turn and just had to deal with it, because that’s just the way it is, I encourage you to watch this webcast … it will be worth your time.